THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS

Friday, July 23, 1976 25

Koor Ltd. Develops

Writer Says Role of Yiddish Humor Is to Keep You 'Treffing'

BY DAVID SCHWARTZ

"Yes," smiles the stran-
ger.
Whereupon Mr. Jacobson
smacks the stranger right
across the face, but the
stranger only laughs.
"Why are you laughing —
I slapped you," said Mr. Ja-
cobson.
"I know," says the stran-
ger, "but you see, I fooled
you. I am not Sam Kagonov-
ich at all. My name is Gold-
farb."
Besides laughter, Jews
also like something to
worry about. For instance,
take a bagel. It is some-
thing to eat, but are Jews
satisfied with eating it?
No, you will find discus-
sion among Jews on the
question — what happens
to the hole of the bagel
after the whole bagel is
eaten?
The conclusion some
reached is that after the
bagel is eaten, the hole
moves to the kesheneh (the
pocket) which of course has
to pay for the bagel.
Other people might not
have much regard for such
things as the hole of a bagel,
but to the Jew, nothing is

(Copyright 1976, JTA, Inc.)

A Jew goes to a dentist to
have a bad tooth extracted.
"Which tooth is it?" asks
the dentist.
"Treff," (guess) said the
Jew.
The dentist guessed
wrong and pulled out the
wrong tooth. Again he asks
which tooth hurts him and
again hears "treff."
So the dentist goes on
"treffing" incorrectly until
the patient has no teeth. But
the Jew of course had his
laugh at the mistakes the
dentist was making in
"treffing."
What won't a Jew do for a
laugh?
As they say in Yiddish,
tatti, du lachst. (Papa, you
are laughing.) The cir-
cumstances may not be
pleasant, but at least we
can get a laugh out of it.
Suffering has probably
made the Jew appreciate
humor more. No wonder
our greatest Yiddish
writer was Sholom Alei-
chem.
Max Weinrich, the great
authority on the Yiddish
language gives another
characteristic example of
Yiddish humor.
A Mr. Jacobson sees a
stranger and asks, ''Are
you, by any chance, Sam
Kagonovich?"

Extraordinary people
Are our Israeli brothers,
For the impossible
accomplished
By means incredible to
others.

The hijacked plane, the
anguished hearts,
Then, suddenly, gone was
despair!
Like messengers from God
they came,
Twenty-five hundred miles by
air!

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And through coming
generations
Its daring exploits will be
told!

The world was stunned, it
held its breath,
And then burst forth in loud
acclaim
For the assault, unparalleled,
Against civilization's shame.

Will the world at last be
willing
The truth of prophesy to see,
That Israel with wisdom shall
"A light unto all nations
be"?

Free people everywhere
rejoiced,
Their spirits lifted by new
hope, For Israel, with brains
and guts
Showed how with hijackers
to cope -
Added to our nation's glory
Will be this rescue mission
bold,

Or, will it, lulled by apathy,
Retreat behind self-centered
shield
And to barbaric terrorists,
With non-concern its
conscience yield?

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Papa, you're laughing.
But perhaps, there is some-
thing to it. After all — is not
the language of a people the
thing that most establishes
the validity of its existence?
It is a kind of music which
rises above and drowns out
the discords of prejudice.
Once an use and ever a
custom.

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they snatched
And flew them back to Israel
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are confounded in silence.

who boasted of her igno-
rance of Yiddish. "Before I
met my husband," she said,
"I never even knew what a
schlemiel was."
Yiddish is spoken less to-
day. Isaac Carmel used to
tell of the small boys listing
the four stages of life: first,
infancy; second, when you
grow up; third, when you
get married; fourth, when
you get old and speak Yid-
dish.
Today, even among the
old, Yiddish is spoken less,
but it has its ardent devo-
tees and they tell even of the
Jewish mother in Israel who
insists on speaking Yiddish
to her children. "I want
them to remember they are
Jews," she says. Of late
there has been something of
a revival of Yiddish in Is-
rael.
Sometimes, I have a
queer feeling — like in a
dream state. I see Chaim
Herzog rise in the United
Nations, and he speaks in
Yiddish, winding up in He-
brew, and in this dream it
seems to me the world is
listening as never before
and even the enemies of Is-
rael in the United Nations

The Miracle at Entebbe

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unimportant. According to
the Yiddish writer, B. Kov-
ner, many Jewish bakers
discontinued making bagels
because they ran out of
holes.
Of late, one notes an old
Yiddish expression has be-
gun to be seen and heard in
the English media — the
bottom fact. This is derived
from the Yiddish expression
untershten shurah. Jews
like to go down to the root of
things. The Yiddish lan-
guage itself, it seems to me,
partakes of this characteris-
tic. It is blunt. Sometimes
the Yiddish speaker does
not even require words. A
shrug of the shoulders and
the word "nu" will suffice.
Tone of voice is important.
"He has his nerve, I
won't do it," says Mr.
Rubenstein, when he read
a letter from his son ask-
ing for $100. When the
same letter is read to him
by another in a softer,
pleading tone, he says,
"Well now that he speaks
that way, I'll send my dear
son the money."
There are the snobs. Like
the swank English Jewess

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